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This morning I headed over to the Bronxville track. It was early. It was raining lightly. I was ambivalent about my planned workout given how cruddy my Saturday session was.

But I felt good in the warmup despite the fact that it was 100% humidity. My hamstrings felt okay. I’ve slept remarkably well for the last five nights (my longest stretch without insomnia in a few years).

My workout plans, from a pure workload perspective, were not ambitious. But there was, today, an important psychological component to the proceedings. In short, I wanted confirmation that I could run 800 meters under 3:00 without doing an all out effort. I figure if I can manage that at this point, I should be able to crack 6:00 in the mile in a few weeks.

I was prepared to give it three tries. I only needed one: 2:57. Okay. I can work with that.

Since I am saving my legs for my time trial in the Tuckahoe mile road race on Sunday, the rest of the planned workout consisted of shorter repeats with nice long rests inbetween. These too yielded some pleasant surprises (please ignore that second 400; I have no idea what happened on that one):

400s: 88, 96, 91

200s: 37, 38

100s: 19, 17

I ran 100 meters in 17 seconds while tired.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I was listening to Van Halen’s “Dance the Night Away” at the time. That’s a really good song to run fast to.

Sounds fast to me! And nice call with the Van Halen. Have you ever broken 6 in a mile before? By coincidence, 2:57 was my fastest 800 last time I did intervals (the other 5 were between 3:00 and 3:04.) What’s your mile race strategy? My instinct would be to start out brisk but not crazy and then go all out full-on insane the last 1/4.